Prep Profile – South Kent

New England Recruiting Report | Sunday, October 28th, 2012

South Kent School has had one of the most prominent prep basketball programs in the entire country over the last decade.   

In each of the last nine seasons the school has put together a loaded roster with alumni including NBA players like Andray Blatche, Dorrell Wright, Isaiah Thomas, and Mo Harkless along with a plethora of big names from college basketball like Matthew Bryan-Amaning (Washington), Gilbert Brown (Pittsburgh), Maurice Creek (Indiana), Kevin Parrom (Arizona) Russ Smith (Louisville), J.J. Moore (Pittsburgh), Kadeem Jack (Rutgers), and Ricardo Ledo (Providence) among others.  

With that type of rich recent tradition, the 2012-2013 version of the South Kent team is in an ironic and unique position…under the radar.  

The pre-season buzz seems to be surrounding some of South Kent’s NEPSAC brethren, and that is likely just fine with Cardinal’s head coach Kelvin Jefferson who, like any head coach, is assuredly more concerned with post-season success than pre-season headlines.  

Kamall Richards may be the most prominent name on the roster.  A product of another storied program at St. Benedict’s High School in New Jersey, Richards was somehow under-recruited throughout his senior year.  It wasn’t until the spring AAU season that he made a splash with college coaches and now arrives at South Kent with varying levels of mid to high-major recruitment.  

Another prominent name on this year’s roster is Shane Rector, a breakdown style guard from the Bronx who came up the AAU ranks with the New York Gauchos before running with the Playaz Basketball Club during this year’s EYBL circuit.  Rector is, in many ways, representative of this Cardinal team as a whole because he arrives at prep school still a little under-recruited despite his success against top national competition.    

Reggie Agbeko chose a post-graduate route for similar reasons.  After a starring career at St. Joseph’s High School in upstate New York, the Buffalo native was looking for the bigger and better recruitment.  South Kent will provide him with the opportunity to prove his worth on the nation’s premier post-graduate stage.  

Fellow post-graduates Greg Davis and Nolan Long were so far under the radar that most division I coaches weren’t even aware of them. Davis had primarily division III recruitment coming out of Piscataway High School in New Jersey but has quickly attracted a variety of division I suitors since arriving at South Kent.  Long, was slated to play baseball at the University of Rhode Island, until deciding he was heading to the prep ranks in hopes of finding a landing spot that would allow him to pursue both of his athletic passions.  

The rest of South Kent’s 2013 class can all tell similar stories as Robert Taylor, Braiten Madrigal, and Quentin Winerman are all looking to prove themselves this year.  In fact, A.J. Edwards is the team’s only committed prospect after pledging to Yale earlier this fall.  

Not surprisingly, South Kent’s class of 2014 features two of the best prospects you might never have heard of before.  Zach Brown is a six-foot-six swingman from Texas with a very high upside and Dusan Perovic is a six-foot-eight skilled big man from Montenegro who follows in the footsteps of Nemanja Djurisic who played his way into the SEC after wearing the maroon and black for two seasons.  

The moral of the story is this.  South Kent’s may not be dominating the pre-season headlines but don’t expect that to have much impact, if any at all, on their success this season.  In fact, it may serve as just the thing to rally a talented, but under the radar group of guys, to come together and do big things this season.